ABSTRACT
The concern underlying this paper is to identify principles for environmental policy and more specifically analyse the similarities and contrasts between environmental economics and a broader concept and discipline of environmental management. Advocates of environmental cost-benefit analysis (CBA) are often criticised as if they desired their approach to be used as a ‘stand-alone’ decision criterion, which would certainly be a blinkered way to proceed. Interestingly, however, the environmental economics literature generally focuses upon the selection of instruments that minimise the overall cost of achieving prescribed environmental objectives (Hahn 1989). This suggests an uneasiness within the economics profession over setting environmental objectives without regard to socio-political factors. Yet the rejection of a dominant role for environmental economics leaves unanswered the question of the extent to which the discipline should be allowed to operate within environmental decision-making, and whether the valuation methodology must be thrown out or merely constrained. In any case the likely alternatives require explicit attention.
